DIY: felt flower wreath

It was the day before my daughter's 6th birthday--end of January.  We were having 4 little girls come over for a treasure hunt.  Read more about that here.  The house needed some color--fast.  I don't know where the idea came from--usually I get my inspiration from others, but this came to me in a flash.  A felt flower wreath and I had (almost) all the supplies on hand.  

18 inch straw wreath - I highly recommend the straw wreaths ($4-5) as opposed to the styrofoam ($12)

various fabric remnants

multiple sheets of different colors of felt, including light/med/dark green

tulle

pom poms or buttons

glue gun/sticks

My daughter and I made a bunch of felt flower broaches last spring to send out a little gifts to friends and family and we had some left over.   I looked around for some other designs to mix it up a bit; I think if I had more than 24 hours to put this together, I might have incorporated even more kinds of flowers, but I think it turned out pretty well as-is.

These are great tutorials I used... you can find:

the fabric flowers here by Pink Paper Peppermints

the felt flowers here by Betz White

the dark pink pointsetta type at about 5 o'clock here

(from Martha Stewart, but I cannot find the link now)

I started by making a LOT of flowers, more is better, for this--I did 23.  I then wrapped the wreath with the tulle to give a base for better adhering and to add some interest--but you can't even see it really.  Then, I cut several leaves, free-form, in 3 different greens and placed them all around--facing in and out to mix it up.  I found my handy-dandy glue gun was the perfect tool for the job.  And finally, I just started arranging the flowers: clustering the small ones together, giving the big ones some room.  It was fun; I just played around till it looked right.

that dark blob the lower right-hand corner is our dog, Josie.

It would have greeted our special guests on the outside of the door, except for the freezing rain, snow and wind SO I hung it on the inside where I think it made quite a lovely statement and provided just the color I was looking for.